| Summary: | The continuous industrial expansion of engineered silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in conjugation with their ability to be released from the products to the water will likely enhance their accumulation in environmental and biological matrices. The current level of understanding on the environmental fate and ecotoxicology of AgNPs in the aquatic environment still has some gaps. Thus, the main goal of this thesis is to develop an integrated methodological approach to assess the effects of AgNPs to freshwater organisms at different levels of organization, from sub-individual and sub-cellular endpoints, to individual and extrapolating to the community level effects. . At the sub-individual and sub-cellular levels we studied the biochemical and protein expression responses in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii exposed to AgNPs with different sizes. Concerning the individual levels we studied the effects of AgNPs in the growth of the microalgae Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata and the effects on the survival, growth and reproduction of the crustacean Daphnia magna exposed to AgNPs via the water or the diet. Finally, to extrapolate the effects of AgNPs from the individual to the community level we used the SSD approach.
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